Wednesday, December 5, 2012

"Epilogue"


Not, it´s not really an epilogue. Though I wish it kinda was.

The last week has been literally so busy, that as Virta put it, most of us have only had time for eating and sleeping besides the studio. Some not even that. So, let´s start from last week´s thursday.


Thursday, day 16

Virta and Vreth got to the studio at 10, and started to make Halkodisko better from what it was yesterday. It was top- notch, and after that they made all the choruses for Rivfader, as they were "screamed" while the actual verses are in a bit different style.
After getting to the studio from work at the afternoon, we continued with some keyboards. We got three songs ready, got something to eat and Tundra came as well. B.Dominator also visited us briefly. Then we unleashed Vreth, who sang Rivfader´s missing parts, did vocals for Soutu and....and...hmm. Something? I´m really sorry, but at this point- especially writing it down a bit later- it´s all a goddamn mess in my head.
Then we realized JUST IN TIME that one song´s keyboard/guitar- intro is going to be hell of a similar with another song we´ve done in the past, so we actually spent two hours for think- tanking how should we change it. We tried different sounds, ideas, arrangements and quite a few approaches until we found the exact way we wanted it to sound like. Everybody was very happy with it, and our "business meeting- lookalike" with papers and maps paid off big time. Now said corporate approach doesn´t work with producing metal music?
I dropped Tundra home at 1:30 AM and headed home.

Friday, day 17

It´s all groundhog day. Vreth and Virta were doing takes while I got to the studio, then I started to play keys again. Then Tundra got there. I saw one guitar player briefly on monday, and the other last week. Do we actually have guitarists in this band? We played keys with Virta, poisonized everything with such awesome sounds called as "kanala", "der alte", "munapää" and "pallinaama" and laughed our asses off. With all the keyboards now finally performed, Vreth continued filling his row of X´s with some great takes and we went finally home at 2AM.

Saturday, day 17

I left my car home today, because I swore I will start drinking beer 9AM today. What happened in reality, is that I started doing it seriously at 2AM. But before that happened quite a lot.
We started Beasty D´s Percussion Helvete at 9, and by the time the others got there, we already had recorded quite a load of them. Then I started running around the studio, picking up all the acoustic instruments and played them....a lot. So much different shit. Acoustic guitars, banjos, mandolin, bouzoki...and of course I forgot the guitar leads. >.<
It took a while for me to check out the drum sound Nino (the studio owner) had pre- produced and as I wasn´t prepared for starting producing and mixing at the same time we were supposed to sing, the singing took the hit. While most of the people were drinking beer at the lounge and listening to music and amusing themselves partying, we were at the studio booth trying the compress the snare with an old Urei squasher. So...much....distortion.
We started FINALLY recording the choirs and background shouts at 10PM and decided to only use three guys first in order to get the most "tight" result. Then we backed them up with the "football- choir" and saw it was perfect. The last takes were ready at 2AM and we finally got the chance to sit down after working 17 hours in a row. At 5:30AM I decided I´ve now relaxed enough and went home, leaving still some people drinking beer.

Sunday, day 18

The "some people drinking beer" were actually still there drinking more beer when I got back to the studio the next afternoon. "Cool", I thought, and decided to hit the control room after enjoying loud death metal, general droopyness and awesome drunken stories for half an hour. Gotta admit a spontaneous sunday- afternoon beer sessions would had been quite fun, but also finishing your tasks, preserving your marital status and eating something next week would be even more fun in the long run. Me so boring.
Vreth arrived a half an hour later with a pizza. Me so jealous! Then Virta came as well, the beer- drinkers went to a bar and we started doing the last vocals for Nexro and Marilyn. While I was editing Nexro´s final takes...

"Snap", said the electricity.

"Crackle", said the computer monitor.

"Pop", said my blood pressure.

We found out that a faulty laptop- charger had gone berserk, caused an overload and destroyed the fuse. Replacing that after some phonecalls and general twiddling, we switched on the computer with a drop of sweat. We still didn´t have backups from yesterday´s 17 hour sessions with "guest stars" so if the hard drive would had been FUBAR, we´d be screwed for good.
Luckily it ran smoothly, and we found out that everything was still there. Pheeeeeew.
After backing everything up, we continued with Nexro´s vocals. I had to leave before Marilyn got finished and we still had arrangements to do. What now? A wild brilliant idea appears!
We made the rhythmic arrangements and the phrasing together with Vreth and Virta, but I actually spoke them to the hard disk on the top of the music, so that Vreth could check out from there how we decided it to go. MUCH more faster to do these kind of "notes" instead of either...
a) writing rhythms down for him on paper for three verses and a bridge
b) him screaming everything two sentences at a time, while we´d also had to take care of the overall sound, performance and general "feeling" of the vocal takes which would be the final ones.

I called the guys 22:30 and they had just finished the rest of Marilyn.  Hurray for them! Monday would be mixing the shit down.  Let´s see how that´d turn out! So much to think still, and files and tracks to transfer between computers. More on that later.



1 comment:

  1. The studio must be infested with gremlins, playing tricks on all of your electrical devices xD

    No, seriously, you should buy some "Anti-Gremlin XXX" spray or whatever :) Cause I'm really excited to hear the result in the and of all.

    ReplyDelete